Family affairs and chocolate teapots

This week's meeting of Carmarthenshire County Council was notable for several interesting revelations. We learned, for example, about the extent of political cooperation between Labour and the Independents as they stitched up a deal to ensure that control of the council would remain in the same hands whatever the outcome of the elections in May. We learned a little more about the financial arrangements between the Council and Scarlets, and we learned that the Council does not normally carry out due diligence on the financial affairs of the organisations to which it gives large amounts of money.

The last point came up in a discussion about social care, a discussion which highlighted once again the Tweedle Dee-Tweedle Dum relationship between the Independents and the Labour leadership. The Independents believe strongly in outsourcing social care, and make no bones about it. Politically this is tricky territory for Labour, so although some backbench Labour councillors are clearly worried about it, the leadership sits quietly while Meryl Gravell, Pam Palmer, Mair Stephens, Jane Tremlett et al make all the noise in the knowledge that if any of this came to a vote, the whips would ensure that Labour and the Independents stand shoulder to shoulder.

In that way, Labour can support Big Society outsourcing without antagonising the unions and its grassroots supporters.

During the course of this discussion allegations were made about the management of one "third sector" organisation in Llanelli, where the charity's chief executive is apparently being paid £57,500 a year and, it is alleged, various family members make up part of the rest of the payroll.

No names were mentioned, but typically "third sector" organisations like this receive funding from three main sources: the Welsh Government, the Lottery and the County Council. Over the years, this funding amounts to very large sums of money.

The Chief Executive told councillors that the Council was interested principally in the quality of service being delivered by such organisations, and that it "normally" left due diligence to the government, and presumably the Lottery (although he did not say that).

As we know now after the scandals involving, for example, Awema and Plas Madoc Communities First in Wrexham, doling out public money with your eyes closed in the assumption that somebody else is doing the checks is not necessarily fool-proof.

One of the things which both Plas Madoc and Awema had in common was the involvement of families in their operations, and in the case of Awema at least there were clear warnings that all was not well long before the brown stuff hit the fan.

So why do public bodies ignore warning signs in cases like these? Incompetence probably has a role to play, but councils and governments often invest more than money in these ventures. We are talking about political capital. 

If you have a close relationship with an organisation, have championed and defended it and been photographed and filmed shaking hands and cutting ribbons, admitting that you were wrong can be very difficult.

And here we come to one of the weaknesses of the cabinet system in local government, where political bigwigs tend to stay around for a very long time. They appoint the senior officers, ensure that they are paid very handsomely and nominate them for CBEs, OBEs and all the rest of the fairytale nonsense. Over time, the senior political and professional upper echelons of councils can become joined at the hip with a single agenda where failure and admitting mistakes are not an option, and the politicians and senior officers look out for each other.

The organisation referred to in Wednesday's debate is not the only third sector organisation in Carmarthenshire to have been given the enthusiastic backing of the council's top brass and lots and lots of public money. It is also not the only organisation involving families and husband and wife teams.

As with Awema, there have also been plenty of warning signs, including major discrepancies between what the the council says on the one hand, and the third sector organisations say on the other.

So if the Council is unwilling or unable to lift up the stone, who will?

Step forward the Wales Audit Office, but then they don't seem very keen to peer under stones either.

When a member of the public raised concerns about one of the council's schemes and pointed out the discrepancies between what was being said by the council and the recipient of large amounts of public money, the WAO did what it always seems to do. It nipped down the road and asked the council officers if everything was OK. You can guess what the answer was.

As for the discrepancies, the WAO's position seems to be that the council's version is the only one which counts. Others simply don't exist, so there is no discrepancy. 

The WAO has also repeatedly made it clear that it is not interested in what councils spend their money on. The only thing which matters, it says, is whether all of the right boxes were ticked along the way and the most efficient path was taken, even if the destination involved jumping off a cliff.

So if the council decided to replace metal teapots in its canteens with chocolate ones, the WAO would only be interested in making sure that the tendering process was correctly followed and the decision had been taken with the correct authorisation.

Having said that, the only course of action for any councillors worried about council funding of third sector organisations is to go to the WAO and try to insist that, rather than the usual cosy chat with officers in County Hall, the auditors go and take a long, hard look at the recipients of the money.

In one case that springs to mind, that may not be easy because the organisation has successfully ensured that its finances are completely and legally closed to all public scrutiny.

Care and language - More than Words

As we all grow older and more frail, language and the ability to communicate become even more important, especially when we lose the ability to do many of the things which we used to take for granted. As we get older, our worlds grow smaller, and the world can come to seem a frightening and lonely place.

Dementia, severe strokes and other medical conditions such as Parkinson's all affect our ability to use language and communicate, and the numbers of people with dementia in its various forms are rising fast.

Recently Beti George, a broadcaster who is best known to Welsh-speaking audiences, has made a number of radio and television programmes about different aspects of dementia, and has been campaigning to raise public awareness of the illness for some time. Her partner is one of those affected.

By coincidence the broadcast of one of Beti's programmes on S4C (Un o bob tri - One in three) came a few days after I had got back from visiting some residential homes in England. Two of the homes had a high proportion of dementia sufferers, and some were in the advanced stages of the disease, unable to move, feed themselves or communicate. Others were much more responsive.

I was visiting these homes as part of a project which is, at its heart, about communicating with older people, whether they have dementia or not, and it was a very rewarding experience. Making someone laugh, or even just getting a smile from someone who is otherwise not responsive is beautiful. Sometimes people will respond with memories; they might sing along to a song, join in reciting a short poem or talk about things they like or remember. A picture of a robin was probably the single most popular thing I had in my bag of tricks.

For people whose first language is Welsh, dementia can mean that as the disease progresses, they lose their ability to speak and understand English first. If your carers don't speak Welsh, the world can suddenly become a very lonely and frightening place.

Severe strokes can also affect language, and people who were otherwise bilingual can lose the ability to communicate in their second language. I know a young woman who is a speech therapist. She had been learning Welsh for a few months, and told me about one of her patients from a small village in the north of Pembrokeshire. This elderly lady had suffered a severe stroke and was slowly recovering. Being greeted in Welsh meant the world to that old lady.

Parkinson's does not rob people of their memories or reasoning abilities, but it can affect people's speech. My Dad, now 82, was diagnosed with Parkinson's 20 years ago, and his voice is sometimes extremely weak. But he loves to talk, and it is often very difficult or even impossible to understand what he is saying. It can be very frustrating for him, and requires a lot of patience from the people around him.

Of course, it is not just old people for whom language is important. We all of us, especially children, will feel more secure and less vulnerable if we can speak to people in the language of our homes and families when we are ill. Imagine a child with leukaemia who comes from a Welsh-speaking family ending up in a big city hospital where nobody or hardly anybody speaks Welsh.

Yesterday I went to observe a meeting at County Hall in Carmarthen. Part of that involved a fairly lengthy discussion about the annual report of the Director of Social Care. The report is very long, and if truth be told, not the most inspiring document you have ever read. The discussion largely reflected that, but one of the councillors, Alun Lenny, asked about Welsh language provision for dementia patients.

The councillor responsible for social care services on the ruling Executive Board, Jane Tremlett, responded that steps were being taken to provide non-Welsh speaking care staff with basic language skills.

At least that's something, because Carmarthenshire as a local authority has a pretty poor record when it comes to the language. Like all other local authorities in Wales, it has adopted a formal language plan, and is supposed to produce an annual report to show what progress if any is being made. Currently those reports on the council website are unavailable, but reports from previous years show that only a tiny proportion of the council's staff receive any training in the language (we're talking about 1-2%).

So we should welcome the initiative to provide at least some basic Welsh training for carers, although how adequate that training will be and whether the staff who have received it will actually put it to use is another matter. The truth is that being able to communicate with a sick child or an elderly person with dementia, Parkinson's or the after-effects of a stroke requires much more than being able to say Bore da.

The Welsh Government launched an initiative called Mwy na geiriau - More than words to raise awareness of this problem and to try to improve Welsh language provision, but we clearly still have a long way to go, even in places with high proportions of Welsh speakers, such as Carmarthenshire.

My reason for writing about this in English is partly to try to raise awareness a little, but also to show non-Welsh speaking readers, including those who are downright hostile to the language, why language matters and why language campaigners should not be dismissed as unreasonable fanatics.

20 years ago my wife, who is German, went to hospital to give birth to our youngest daughter. By a pure stroke of chance, the midwife just happened to be German also. It was a slightly surreal experience for me in an NHS hospital being bossed about by a midwife in German, but it made a huge difference to my wife in what was a fairly difficult delivery.

Here's a short film with English subtitles to end with.

Autumn Term - A whiff of scandal (Part II)

You can just imagine Council Chair, Siân Thomas, asking a group of children, "Now who can tell me what it says under the County's Coat of Arms? No, it's not that Kevin. Winston, do put that down".

Well, the answer is Rhyddid Gwerin Ffyniant Gwlad, which roughly translated means "the freedom of the people ensures the prosperity of the land". It really ought to be changed.

Socks and spin

Skipping over the Annual Treasury Management and Prudential Indicator Report 2011-12, we reached the Annual Report of the Director of Social Services. That's the one which told us about Mr Davies's socks.

The Director, Bruce McLernon, took 7 pages to deliver his introduction to the report, and he was not about to let us off any more lightly.

Perhaps it was the acoustics in the public gallery, or perhaps it was the delivery, but Mr McLernon could be heard mumbling rapidly in a monotonous Ulster drawl for what felt like hours.

He told us, somewhere near the beginning, that he enjoyed preparing these annual reports because he could highlight all of the good things that were happening. Which is actually spin for, well, spin.

Somewhere towards the end he got on to Areas for Improvement.

If you have been around the block a few times, you will know that when you get to questions in a job interview about your strengths and weaknesses, you must never, ever admit to any weaknesses. What you do is take a strength and present it as a weakness. For example, "I am not a very patient person.I like to see results".

Mr McLernan admitted that his weakness was wanting to listen to and engage with councillors much more.

Glynog Davies decided to try a bit of engagement. What could the council do to help people with learning difficulties, especially those in rural areas, to develop and learn new skills?

Mr McLernon quoted The Daily Telegraph, the newspaper of choice for all those in social services, and side-stepped the question.

Alun Lenny asked a very good question about dementia and language, a subject touched on recently by this blog, and one which deserves separate treatment.

Kevin Madge rose again and waffled. "Let's be honest,...um,.....team doing an excellent job,.....lots of work to be done,.....less resources,......challenges".

If Cllr Lenny was hoping for an answer, he wasn't going to get one from Kev.

Cllr Tremlett stepped forward once more to say that Cllr Lenny's question was very pertinent, and there were some plans.

A whiff of scandal

Just as things seemed to be calming down, Winston Lemon decided to toss in a hand grenade. "We're short of this and that and everything else for older people, but when it comes to substance abusers, there is a bottomless pit". Llanelli was turning into an open prison, he said.

Mr McLernon made a point about the families of substance abusers, and said that much of the work was being done by charities.

Meryl Gravell was rattled. If it weren't for the voluntary sector, the budget for social care would be far higher, she said.

Winston tussled with the Headmistress over his right of reply. Voluntary services? The director of one unnamed voluntary service was earning £57,500 a year, he fumed. How voluntary was that?

Keri Thomas (Labour) asked what sort of scrutiny was carried out on the voluntary sector.

The Chief Executive decided to tread carefully in view of the allegations. The council inspected the services being provided by "third sector" organisations, but not necessarily their finances. That was something that was normally done by government.

Like Awema, he might have added, but didn't.

Other councillors were also concerned about misappropriation of funds, and suddenly, up in the public gallery, the usual smell of mildew, BO and boiled cabbage was suffused with a whiff of scandal. No organisation was named, but it would not be too hard to guess. Keep reading the blogs.

Cllr Mair Stephens (Independent), another member of the ruling Executive Board, intervened. Charities were regulated by the Charities Commission, and without them we would be in "a very, very bad place".

Perhaps she would like to check the accounts of some of the Council's partners in the Third Sector. How about Towy Community Church? Only thanks to some nifty footwork by the church's accountants and lawyers, there are none available. 

An Uplifting Car Park

Eventually we moved on to reviewing minutes of past meetings of the Executive Board. 

Cllr David Jenkins asked about a mysterious item relating to the sale of an asset by the Scarlets. Are we entitled to know what the anticipated income from that development might be, he enquired.

Siân Caiach was less coy when she asked whether the council might get a share of the proceeds from the sale of the 150 year lease on the car park.

The Chief Executive looked grave. The land was leased for 150 years, he explained, and we cannot take it back, even if we wanted to.

This made the incredibly long peppercorn lease all sound a bit regrettable, and nothing at all to do with the Chief Executive, but he had some good news. Before the lease can be sold, the rugby club will need the council's permission, and "there would normally be a division of any uplift".

As we know, there is nothing normal about the arrangements between the council and the rugby club, but Mr James assured councillors that there would be money coming in. He just did not know how much, and anyway the land was not really a car park, it was just vacant land which might be used as a car park.

Nobody thought to ask what the council's percentage share would be.

Serbia

Winston Lemon was back on his feet. How about some assistance for the "round ball" for once (a reference to football for any non-sporting readers)?

Kevin Madge was off again. "Difficult times.....bottom line....real quality jobs coming out of this....money coming in."

The "real quality jobs" he was referring to would be in the pub/hotel which is being proposed for the site. 

A couple of councillors suggested that there was no reason why some of the windfall from the non-car park could not go to football, if anyone wanted to apply.

Rather unkindly, the Chair pointed out that in view of the previous night's fiasco (Wales were thrashed 6-1 by Serbia), Welsh football needed all the help it could get. 

Remedial reading

Next was Estyn's general review of the county's schools. This was warmly welcomed, and Kevin Madge seized the opportunity to boast that his old school had received a mention.

Fortunately the report had not gone into any embarrassing detail about young Kev's school record.

This took us on to the current furore about GCSE grades. The Chief Executive pointed out that a couple of the county's schools were particularly affected, and that it could have serious implications for their bandings.

Kev also took the opportunity to talk about the Executive Board's Big Day Out in Ammanford. Next on the list for visits are Kidwelly and Llandeilo.

He has also been on lots of visits to different parts of the county with the relevant local members. Thank goodness for the new Merc.

A question about coastal erosion followed, and this was dealt with at some length by Cllr Colin Evans, who managed to sneak in a polar bear-ist joke.

Copyright

Peter Hughes Griffiths, the Plaid leader, referred back to the trip to Ammanford where the Executive Board had unanimously (as always) approved a "partnership agreement" between Labour and the Independents. PHG said large chunks of it were uncannily reminiscent of Plaid's election manifesto, and he reeled off a dozen or more examples of points which appeared to have been lifted straight out of that document. 


He therefore felt obliged to welcome the agreement, but noted that it was due to expire after only one year. Plaid would be very happy to help if they ran out of ideas after that.

One of the very few advantages the public has up in the gallery is that it can sometimes see things which the councillors cannot.

So when Kev rose yet again to reply to Peter Hughes Griffiths, he could not see his Labour colleagues behind him shifting uncomfortably in their seats, staring at the floor and looking generally suicidal.

Suddenly in the middle of the flow of waffle, our leader revealed for no apparent reason that he reads "the blogs", before going on to talk about building bungalows (the council is hoping to start building homes again).

He thanked PHG, and welcomed what he had said. Kev does not do irony.

Rosa Klebb

Seating arrangements are important.

Giles Morgan (Independent) used to sit on the back benches, but has now moved down to the spot formerly occupied by Meryl Gravell. Meryl, for so long Queen of the Chamber, has removed herself to Giles's old perch, even though she is still on the Executive Board.

The result is that Giles can no longer see the sharpened knitting needles.

Anyway, Giles does get irony, and he made a little joke about Plaid and Labour having just two manifestos between them, whereas the Independents had 21 (or possibly 22).

If you have ever seen one of these documents, you are very lucky. Nobody else has, but Giles wanted to keep up the old pretence that the Independents really are what it says on the can.

Minutes later he was skewered by one of Meryl's knitting needles, as she told councillors that in the run-up to the council elections, she had sat down with Pam and Kev to discuss plans and review Plaid's manifesto.

Together the trio had concluded that a huge part of the Plaid manifesto was in fact the programme adopted by her administration.

That told us all we needed to know about the independence of the Independents and the credentials of Carmarthenshire Labour. 

A sinking school

Siân Caiach told councillors that she had sent the Director of Education a number of questions about the new school planned for Stradey. Apparently it has emerged that the land is unstable, and she wanted to know what additional costs would be incurred.

The Chief Executive intervened and said she should wait for Mr Sully's reply.

The meeting seemed to be drawing to a close, and so Cneifiwr headed for the exit, but while waiting to be released, voices were raised in anger back in the chamber. Whatever it was, we shall never know unless the Carmarthen Journal dares tell us.

Two friendly guards escorted me towards the exit, and I told them, truthfully, that nobody was left in the public gallery.

Well if there is anyone left hiding up there, it will be a pretty grisly end, one of them joked. With a month to go before the next meeting, the chances of survival would be slim indeed.

We all agreed that of all places you might want to die in, the public gallery in County Hall would be very low on the list.

Update

Caebrwyn has discovered the reason for the shouting - see Sewers and Fisticuffs (Almost).

Autumn Term under the new Headmistress - September Meeting of Carmarthenshire County Council (I)

The new term started after a break of three months, although I have to report that quite a number of the pupils appeared to have decided to extend their holidays. The Independent benches were noticeably very bare, with absentees including Pam Palmer (one of our two deputy leaders, salary £31,000+) and Llandovery's Ivor Jackson (believed to be enjoying a cruise). Also absent from school was Labour's Keith Davies (no relation as far as we know to the elderly party going Assembly Member for Llanelli). Keith is Executive Board Member responsible for, um, schools.

The absentee role call was read out by Chief Executive Mark James in Welsh, one of his very rare forays in the language. Da iawn chi! What a pity that so many senior councillors who clearly have quite a good grasp of the language, including Kevin Madge, Tegwen Devichand and Meryl Gravell avoid using it when they could be setting an example.

The Headmistress, or Chair, was in particularly sunny mood, despite having attended over 100 events during the summer, and even the most hard-bitten cynics were putty in her hands. Except for Cllr Winston Lemon, who was clearly a very naughty boy at school.

The Chair is short of stature, and the massive chain of office seemed to have grown over the summer months. If that wasn't enough, she was wearing a pair of gigantic gold earrings. It's probably what Boudicca looked like as she prepared to slaughter the Romans. Perhaps she will have blades fitted to the wheels of the limo, now that Kev has got one of his own.

She has such a pleasant, homely voice that she could probably announce that the Council had issued an order for the massacre of the first born in every household in the county, and still have everybody cooing and aaah-ing. At least that was the effect she had on Cneifiwr until he realised that she had just announced that this month's crop of honours included Dave Gilbert, the Director of Regeneration and Leisure, who can now add OBE to his name.

Mr Gilbert is one of those people who always looks as though he is about to hit someone, although as the second highest earner in Carmarthenshire, he should have every reason to look very pleased with himself.

Uncharitably, Cneifiwr's thoughts turned to a recent report by a committee of the House of Commons which criticised the honours system for dishing out awards to people just for doing their jobs.

One of the first items of business was the latest humdinger of a report from the Ombudsman for Public Services. This was the report which took the council to task for its treatment of Mr M, a wheelchair user allocated a house that was not adapted for wheelchairs.

If you read the Council's summary of the saga, it is obvious that the Ombudsman will not be getting an invite to this year's Christmas party, but the line that had clearly been agreed for the public meeting was to say, between clenched teeth, that all this happened a very long time ago and that everything had been sorted out. Now can we move on please.

Unfortunately a few of the awkward squad insisted on dragging things out. All the usual suspects, such as Siân Caiach, Glynog Davies, Winston Lemon and Alan Speake bundled in with horror stories of their own. Glynog Davies did a bit of joy riding on a mobility scooter as he told us about an elderly man who was trapped in his home because of the council's inability to provide him with a ramp.

The carefully planned official response collapsed at this point, with Chief Executive Mark James CBE weighing in. He was clearly not in a very good mood, and ticked councillors off for bringing up individual ward matters. The Independents, who would never raise the concerns of their constituents (seriously, they wouldn't) all made approving noises.

But Mr James was off on one. Reading this report, he declared, officers should not have given Mr M and his family a house. They should have been left in their emergency B&B. But officers had nevertheless taken the right decision.

So the wrong decision was, in the same breath, also the right one. It's displays of verbal acrobatics like this that make you realise what separates council chief executives from the chaff. That and a couple of hundred thousand pounds a year.

There are several other reports from the ombudsman in the queue, and so the ombudsman may become a permanent fixture on the agenda. Thinking perhaps of one report where the council is taking court action, the Chief Executive ended discussion with the observation that "we do take exception to what the Ombudsman says on occasion".

We moved on to the closure of the Argel residential home in Carmarthen, which is being redeveloped. Cllr Jane Tremlett, Executive Board Member for Care and Social Services, rose regally. Think Queen's Christmas broadcast 1954. "We were pleased to note that the consultation went extremely well; it was very gratifying for one to know that some residents had been given their first choice of home as they were being rehoused", she told the Commonwealth.

A long and rather confused discussion ensued about the costs of the redevelopment. There is a budgetary shortfall of £1.5 million. Cllr Caiach wanted to know where the money was coming from and whether one of the council's holy cows might have to go for a ride in the butcher's van.

The Chief Executive intervened to give this most unruly pupil a lesson in basic maths. She was confusing the revenue and capital budgets, he sighed, dismissing her silly schoolgirl suggestions that this might cause a rise in council tax.

Rather awkwardly the Head of Maths piped up to point out that all council borrowing is financed by the taxpayer.

Another councillor wanted to know whether the council was planning the additional capacity it would need for care of the elderly based on the Local Development Plan's forecast of a population explosion in Carmarthenshire.

We will never know (although we can guess), because at this point Kevin Madge decided to pop up and thank everybody. He looked forward to building the new home, and this is ongoing, um, er, it's exciting.

To be fair, that was his most coherent speech of the day.

In Part II some interesting revelations will be made.

Merched y Wawr and the Mujahedin

Off to Carmarthen today to see democracy in action, or rather the September meeting of Carmarthenshire County Council.

Fortunately the need to earn a crust will prevent Cneifiwr from attending any more council meetings for the foreseeable future, as they are held at times when most people of working age are unable to attend. Perhaps we will one day be able to watch them online.

In the meantime there has been an exchange of correspondence (here) between Mr John Butler, a resident of Flintshire, and the Local Government and Communities Minister, Carl Sargeant.

Mr Butler writes eloquently about how the proceedings of so many public institutions, from committee meetings at Westminster and sessions of the Welsh Assembly to the Leveson inquiry can be watched by anyone who can access the Internet. Not so Welsh councils.

Mr Sargeant responds briefly to express the hope that councils will embrace the "principle of recording council meetings", while reminding Mr Butler that they are by law supposed to allow the public to attend meetings unless there are "confidential or commercial" matters under discussion.

As we know in Carmarthenshire, proposals for the transfer of public toilets to community councils are just one example of  highly sensitive confidential and commercial matters which can be used to close meetings to the public.

Unlike his colleague in Education, Carl Sargeant has a paralysing phobia when it comes to intervening in anything. Just about every letter he writes seems to contain some variation on the theme of not wishing to stick his ore in to local government business, which clearly has nothing to do with him as minister for local government.

Perhaps his staff have created special macros in Microsoft Word so that, by pressing just a couple of keys, they can spew out a range of stock sentences such as "It is not my intention to issue guidance or advice on this matter".

The Minister's reply to Mr Butler does however contain one interesting novelty, which is the need "in modern society" to consider security.

As far as I am aware, this is the first time anyone has suggested that allowing the public into meetings of Welsh councils has security implications.

Will Abergwili Community Council have to find funds in its budget for airport scanners and machine-gun toting policemen? Will the public gallery in County Hall have to be screened off with bullet-proof glass?

The implications are immense.

Perhaps as a government minister Carl Sargeant is privy to classified information from MI6 about groups which may pose a threat to Welsh councils. Are Merched y Wawr secretly planning a mass attack in Ceredigion? Is the Baptist Mujahedin grouping in Ynys Môn? Will the Llandovery Allotments Association strike in Carmarthen?

Thank goodness for Carl Sargeant. How could we sleep otherwise?

Post-industrial evangelical developments in Johnstown

Johnstown was once a small village close to the county town of Carmarthen, although these days much of it is a very drab and depressing urban sprawl of trading estates, with a little light industry thrown in.

The recession and Carmarthenshire County Council's continuing love affair with retail development elsewhere in the town, which it sees as the answer to all our economic woes, have both taken their toll in Johnstown, now pock-marked with empty buildings and derelict sites. In fact, the council apparently sees Johnstown as a rural community because it has taken to using European Rural Development money to award grants to Towy Community Church and its proposed bowling alley/food bank/furniture recycling/debt counselling/therapy/performing arts centre/church/auditorium in the former St Ivel creamery.

A rural idyll

Incidentally, Towy Community Church says that several hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of work have been carried out on the old creamery. Can you spot it?

Now it seems that Towy Community Church could be getting some competition in Johnstown, with the announcement that Bethel Community Church wants to take over the former MFI premises there as it expands its operations.

Whether there is a doctrinal difference between the two churches is hard to say because both seem to believe in pretty much the same brand of evangelical religion.

There is nothing in the announcement or on the church's website to suggest that it will be seeking funding from the county council, although given the generous support shown for Towy Community Church, Bethel Community Church must surely be tempted. They will, however, need planning permission for whatever it is they want to do with the MFI building.

Watch this space.

Blogio

Does dim rhaid i neb sgwennu blog yng Nghymru ar wahân i ychydig o fois y Bîb fel Vaughan Roderick a Betsan Powys (gweler telerau ac amodau eu cyflogaeth), felly pam fod pobl yn blogio? Nid oherwydd yr arian, mae'n sicr.

Yn fy achos i, y profiad o geisio cael gwybodaeth syml gan y Cyngor Sir wnaeth i fi wylltio. Dim ond gofyn am adroddiad am draffig lleol ac astudiaeth cynllunio manwerthu roeddwn i. Doeddwn i ddim yn disgwyl brwydr hir a rhwystredigaethus yn fy niniweidrwydd.

Es i ati i ddarllen erthyglau di-ri o'r wasg a blogiau am y Cyngor cyn dod i'r casgliad bod yna rywbeth o'i le. Dechrau llethr lithrig oedd hyn dw i'n sylweddoli nawr, ond dechrau digon diniwed.

Y cam nesaf oedd gadael sylwadau ar flogiau pobl eraill ac o dan straeon Golwg 360, cyn penderfynu creu blog fy hun. Ar unwaith roeddwn i'n gaeth i flogio.

Boed hyn yn wers i bawb, ond gan dy fod ti'n darllen y blog yma, mae'n rhy hwyr, falle.

Un o gwestiynau fu'n rhaid ymladd ag e ar y cychwyn oedd, pa iaith? Penderfynais i gadw blog dwyieithog, ond wedi blwyddyn a mwy o flogio, mae'n rhaid cyfaddef mai yn Saesneg yw'r rhan fwyaf o'r blogiadau, ac dw i'n amau nad yw dwy iaith o fewn un blog yn llwyddiannus. Dylwn i fod wedi dewis un iaith a glynu ati.

Ffordd arall o fynd ati yw cadw mwy nag un blog, ac enghraifft amlwg ar hyn yw'r Hen Rech Flin, er ei fod yn dawel ers sbel.

Wrth i ti, fel blogwr newydd, wynebu'r dewis rhwng y ddwy iaith, mae'n well bod yn onest. Pwy yw'r gynulleidfa a beth yw nod dy flog? Wrth reswm, mae maint y gynulleidfa Gymraeg yn llai, ond o weld ystadegau BlogMenai a bywiogrwydd y sylwadau arno, mae'n amlwg bod hen ddigon o bobl sydd am ddarllen blogiau Cymraeg. Ac mae yna rai dylanwadol yn eu plith, mae'n debyg.

Yn ôl Ifan Morgan Jones, mae'n bosib bod oes euraidd y blogiau Cymraeg wedi mynd, er eu bod nhw'n gallu addasu a goroesi wrth i'r cyfryngau cymdeithasol newid, yn ei farn yntau.

Yn y cyfamser, roeddwn i'n siomedig gweld cyn lleied o flogiau Cymraeg ar restr fer Gwobrau Blogiau Cymru - dim ond un a dweud y gwir. Mae Ifan, fel aelod o'r panel, wedi rhoi esboniad am hyn ar ei flog (yma).

Er bod rhyw 400 o flogiau Cymraeg ar restr Hedyn, mae nifer ohonyn nhw wedi hen ddiflannu, mae rhai eraill mewn limbo, tra bod ambell un newydd yn dod i'r fei. Ac wedyn, mae'n dal yn bosib darganfod tlysau bach fel Sgen ti job i fi?

Felly, gyfeillion, mae wastad lle i flogiau Cymraeg newydd am unrhyw bwnc, boed hynny am fwyd neu farddoniaeth, garddio neu grynj. O ran anffyddiaeth, mae Dylan Llyr wedi cornelu'r farchnad, rhaid dweud.

Byddai'n dda gweld mwy o Gymraeg ar y rhestr fer y flwyddyn nesaf. Beth amdani?

Fe fydd rhaid i'r Cneifiwr ddod oddi ar y ffens ddwyieithog cyn hynny, siŵr o fod.

News management

Following on from the open letter to the Editor of the Carmarthen Journal the two blogs have received several comments from Anonymous arguing:

(i) If you don't like the newspaper, don't buy it.

(ii)  "That [i.e. not publishing stories critical of the Council, ed.] is the commercial right of the newspaper. The right to transact their business as they see fit, just as the right to buy (or not to buy) the paper is your right. If County Hall are bullying the paper ("press management" it is called) then that is a matter that needs to be taken up with the County Council through the elected members".

Whoever Anon is, the views they express are what you would expect to hear from County Hall.

Neither Caebrwyn nor this blog is calling for a boycott of the newspaper. The Journal has enough problems without that, and the loss of the paper would be immensely damaging to civil society in the large area served by it.

The second comment seems to me to be much more cynical. The term "commercial right" suggests that the newspaper has some degree of choice, but we have seen several cases in recent years where the choice local papers have been given is between editorial independence and integrity or ruin. If the loss of council advertising revenue is not enough to close a paper, it would at the very least mean further job losses and reduction of news reporting.

That is the sort of commercial freedom normally associated with the Mafia.

Let's take one example to highlight the problem.

The Delyth Jenkins story about the abuse of vulnerable adults in a council day centre is one of legitimate public interest. Earlier this year BBC Cymru broadcast a documentary about it presented by Garry Owen, who is one of the best liked and most respected journalists in Wales. Garry is about as far from the stereotypical Murdoch hack as you can get.

The programme was not a rehash of old news, but was investigating the aftermath of the affair. It pointed out that most of the people involved in the abuse and the subsequent appalling management of the scandal were still in their jobs. Indeed, several had been promoted. It could have added that a couple of our most senior councillors played a less than glorious role in the saga, and that they are still running the council.

The council not only refused to take part in the programme, but called the police to trail Garry Owen and the rest of the BBC team.

Around the same time, the Western Mail also ran a story looking at another aspect of the case which should give cause for concern.

Not only did the Carmarthen Journal  exercise its "commercial right" not to report any of this, but it ran instead a long piece on a 6 month old report from the Care and Social Services Inspectorate praising the council's social care services.

What the Journal did not tell its readers was that the CSSIW report would never have mentioned the Delyth Jenkins case anyway, for the simple reason that the CSSIW's remit does not extend to day centres.

You could call that "news management", but most people would use rather less flattering words.

The flurry of media activity which I have just described was only the latest in the long history of this case. If you look back over the press reports and also the council's own published accounts of it, the picture that emerges is of a local authority which was more concerned with "news management" than actually dealing with the problem itself.

The council's over-riding aim was to shut the story down as quickly as possible, and it even went so far as to use the victim of the abuse, "Sally", as a PR mascot. Despite the unfortunate events, we were told, Sally could not wait to get back to the day centre, and so all was well. When this was reported by a newspaper to the shock and disgust of Sally's parents, the council simply blamed it on "erroneous" reporting by the press.

Again, you could call that "press management", but other words spring to mind.

People in Carmarthenshire are mature enough to know that in any large organisation things will sometimes go wrong. Instead of "news management" they have the right to expect that their local authority will show honesty and openness about what has happened and what has been done about it. They could, for example, tell us whether extending CSSIW's remit to cover day centres is a good idea or if not, why not.

All of which brings us to the final point about taking the matter up with elected councillors. The council's whole approach to "news management" (its bullying of the press, its use of spin, the smearing of political opponents through the press office and the bi-monthly council propaganda sheet) has repeatedly been condemned over the years by MPs and Assembly Members, as well as opposition councillors.

None of that has had the slightest effect. Members of the public have protested, either through letters columns, blogs or direct to councillors. Water off a duck's back.

We are left with news management in what is elsewhere termed a "managed democracy".

PS

A timely and well observed piece has appeared today on the Swansea-based Inside Out blog (comment below). Here's the link.

Open Letter to the Editor of the Carmarthen Journal

Regular readers of this blog will know that concerns have been growing for some time about the editorial independence of the Carmarthen Journal, and things have gone from bad to worse this year with a whole string of important local news stories not being reported by the paper. What these stories have in common is that they don't show the County Council in a good light.

The Journal has a great history and some very dedicated and loyal staff. Like all local newspapers it faces huge challenges, but not all local newspapers have to deal with a PR-obsessed local authority bent on forcing them into becoming uncritical mouthpieces of the top brass in County Hall.

You can find the letter over on Caebrwyn's blog here.

Carmarthenshire County Council - Mr Davies's socks and an early retirement

Slowly, slowly Carmarthenshire County Council is emerging from its long sleep, and two meetings have been scheduled. The first is the Community Scrutiny Committee, which featured in the last post, and the second is a meeting of the full council scheduled for 12 September.

The agenda is not too taxing, consisting for the most part of rubber stamping minutes of old meetings, but a couple of items may attract a flicker of interest.

The first is yet another critical report from the Public Services Ombudsman. This relates to a complaint made by "Mr M", a wheelchair user who was allocated a council property that was not suitable for wheelchairs. He made his first complaint in 2008, and the Ombudsman discovered that the council failed to carry out the necessary modifications over a period of three years.

The report which councillors will be asked to consider comes with a summary (i.e. the bit most likely to be read by some councillors) written by the council, and the summary kicks off with a fairly lengthy list of reasons why the council thinks it was right all the way along. Despite this, the authority has waved the white flag and agreed to accept the Ombudsman's recommendations in full.

Councillors who read blogs (but not the Carmarthen Journal) may also be aware of another report from the Ombudsman which the council likes even less. The reason for the non-appearance of that report on the agenda is that the council is going to court over it.

It will be interesting to see if any of our elected representatives enquire about that, especially since the ombudsman specifically asked the council's officers to provide councillors with a copy.

The report on Mr M deals with social services, and coincidentally councillors will also be considering the annual report from the Director of Social Services, who takes a staggering 7 pages to deliver his introduction. Parts of the report will be familiar to readers of the council's own annual report (reviewed yesterday), including a tale about Mr D from Llandysul and his socks (he needs a carer to help put them on).

The report runs to 80 pages in total, but manages to squeeze in only 10 lines on the subject of complaints, the same amount of space devoted to Mr D and his socks.These show that complaints relating to children's services fell last year. No complaints about other services are mentioned.

There is also no mention of the Public Services Ombudsman and his findings in the case of Mr M. There is also no mention of another report from the ombudsman dealing with the case of "Sally", although that affair attracted a lot of media attention in the year covered by the Director's annual report (although not in the Carmarthen Journal).

The case involving Sally exposed some very serious shortcomings, and Delyth Jenkins, the whistleblower who became a victim herself in the Sally case, pointed out not so long ago that the body which inspects residential homes, the CSSIW, is not responsible for inspecting day centres of the kind where the abuse occurred.

An honest and honourable approach would have been for the Director of Social Services to discuss the case and its aftermath in his report, explaining what lessons had been learned and what is still being done to ensure that the chances of this sort of thing happening again are reduced as much as they can be.

As you might expect, we are fed instead with glossy pictures and quotes praising the council.

Right at the end of the agenda is a small announcement that the Labour group is reshuffling its committee memberships, even though very few committee meetings have actually taken place since the elections back in May.

Cllr Calum Higgins, Cardiff student, part-time employee of party animal Keith Davies AM and Labour county councillor is taking early retirement at the age of 23 from his duties on the Licensing Committee. Perhaps it was all just a bit too much for him.

As we have seen, the Carmarthen Journal is silent about a lot of things these days, but it did get very excited about Calum earlier this year.

"Age is no barrier as young gun proves his worth on the council" it gushed in an article reminiscent of one of those celebrity gossip magazines for teenage girls. OMG!

Oh dear.

The Best of All Possible Worlds

Apologies to those of you who could not see the bottom part of this post. There was a formatting problem which I hope has now been cured.

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Caebrwyn has taken a look at the agenda for the upcoming meeting of Carmarthenshire's "Community" Scrutiny Committee, which covers the council's regeneration and leisure activities. The agenda comes with a small truckload of documentation, much of which is stuffed with figures, and if the committee did what it says on the tin, there would be enough work here to keep them going until the next council elections.

Before we get too excited, however, it is worth remembering that in Carmarthenshire reality and what it says on the tin are often worlds apart. And just in case the Committee gets too big for its boots, the recently amended constitution removed what few teeth were left to the council's various scrutiny committees.

Let's just pick a few areas at random, beginning with the leisure and sports centres.

Llanelli residents might be dismayed to hear that their lesiure centre is on course to lose £769,000 this year (this excludes the Fusion fitness club). They might be even more surprised to hear that the Carmarthen Leisure Centre is heading for a loss of £901,000 this year.

By a fluke of arithmetic, the Carmarthen centre is costing us as much as the centres in Newcastle Emlyn, St Clears, the Gwendraeth Sports Centre, Coedcae Sports Hall, Amman Valley Swimming Pool, Brynaman Swimming Pool, Llandovery Swimming Pool and the Bro Myrddin and Dinefwr bowling centres put together.

That's quite an achievement, and worthy of a bit of scrutiny.

Garnant Golf Course (now under private management) is down to cost us £89,000.

There are lots of big numbers under the Regeneration headings, but no explanations. "Marketing Tourism Development" at £531,000 might repay a look, as might the bland sounding "Support Services Economic Development", costing us £841,000.

Under a very badly formatted report on Capital Budget Monitoring lots of exciting projects make an appearance, including our old friend Towy Community Church bowling alley (£280,000 - target date for completion: ongoing). That's before we hit all of the major regeneration projects in Llanelli, Ammanford and Cross Hands.

The real blockbuster, however, is the report entitled "Annual Report 2011-12 and Improvement Plan 2012-13)". Unlike most of the other reports up for scrutiny, this one contains lots of words (and therefore spin).

The introduction gives us a flavour of what is to come, with pictures of the chief executive (man in suit with big grin) and Council Leader Kevin Madge. Kev is demoted to second fiddle under Mr James, and due to an unfortunate publishing gremlin, he looks like Coco the Clown. Let's hope that was not deliberate.

Anyone wishing to read on will need a strong stomach. Before we can get very much further, up pops a quote from the Wales Audit Office, that well known fearless body which is supposed to safeguard the public interest. "Extensive and detailed.....generally fair and balanced.....thorough and honest" is what they said in their rave review of last year's annual report, apparently. Pity about the word "generally". As for honest, we'll see about that in a moment.

On and on we go. Someone has learned how to use Clipart, because little cut 'n' paste pictures pop up to help us. "Key Improvement Objective Priorities" has a picture of a key, just in case we were struggling with the concept of a key.

Next we have a pie chart showing, allegedly, how satisfied we are with our council. 82% were satsfied, and only 7% were dissatisfied, and Carmarthenshire believes it is above the average.for England as well as Wales. We are not told what questions were asked. An 82% rating is not bad, though, and is probably on a par with the ratings enjoyed by Vladimir Putin and President Assad.

Unfortunately, the report, admits, comparative data is a bit thin on the ground. Otherwise we would probably have been told that our council is best and most loved in the world.


Caebrwyn also fished out some interesting new statistics from the Welsh Government's Data Unit:

After 8 years (and £££s) of the Modernising Education Programme, only 25% of Carmarthenshire schools are deemed 'fit for purpose' - only a 1% increase since last year.

Welsh local authority comparison data published today shows Carmarthenshire 3rd from bottom for road maintenance, 2nd from bottom for reviewing Care Plans, 3rd from bottom for adult carer assessment. Also in the 'red band' for failing to provide residential stability for children in care and for failing to provide SEN statements within the 26 week target.

Perhaps we are just pathetically grateful for anything.

Page after page after page of claims and questionable statistics follow. In every single one of a string of strategic "Outcome Areas", including helping people to live independent lives, helping local businesses to thrive, ensuring that children enjoy the best possible health, contributing to climate change mitigation and effective asset management, the Council scored a bull's eye and was awarded bonus points.

In some areas where the council's record is particularly bad, it produces sweeping statements with little or no evidence, such as,"The Welsh Language Partnership has continued to improve during 2011/12 and the provision of Welsh medium services and opportunities covers all areas of the county". It depends what you mean by "cover".

Just so that we all get the message, the report goes into big, bold bright red type to scream,

Carmarthenshire has a stronger and

more prosperous economy

In case you missed that, the report shouts the same message a bit further down the page for a second time. If you don't believe that, you are probably in the 7% of malcontents.

Perhaps the Scrutiny Committee is better placed to decide whether all of these claims and statistics are true, but for most ordinary mortals it is impossible to verify what we are being told. There are, however, one or two statements which are quite easy to check.

Here's one:

The decision by the Council to take a lease on the former Technium site at Dafen is paying dividends with around 16,000 sq.ft of first class office space being let to businesses operating within the knowledge economy, creating high quality sustainable employment opportunities. 

The Beacon website (Beacon being the rebranded name for Technium) shows that currently 8,500 square feet of space has been let to businesses, with a further 4,000 square feet being occupied by Coleg Sir Gar and various other public agencies.

Let's hope the Scrutiny Committee finds time to check out all of the other "facts".

Un o bob tri - dementia, henoed ac iaith

Dw i wedi bod yn dilyn y gyfres Y Pla Newydd gan Beti George ar y radio, a darlledwyd rhaglen arall am y clefyd creulon hwn ar S4C o dan y teitl Un o bob tri nos Sul ddiwethaf. Er mai testun trist ac anodd yw hwn, mae gan Beti neges bositif.

Fel mae'n digwydd, bu'n rhaid i mi fynd i Loegr yr wythnos diwetha' i gyflwyno prosiect newydd mewn cartrefi henoed, a chefais gyfle i siarad â'r staff a'r preswylwyr. Cartrefi moethus a drud iawn oedd dau ohonyn nhw, tra bod canran uchel o bobl â dementia ac alzheimers yn y lleill. A nhwthau'n ddrud iawn siŵr o fod.

Cefais fy magu mewn teulu estynedig oedd yn llawn hen bobl, a bu'r rhan fwyaf ohonyn nhw fyw i fod yn hen iawn. Bu farw fy mam-gu yn 98 oed, a'i dwy chwaer yn 96. Hyd y gwn i, doedd yr un yn dioddef gan dementia, er bod un o'r modrybedd yn ddryslyd ar y diwedd.

Mae Dad yn byw "gyda Mr Parkinson", fel mae e'n dweud, ers 20 mlynedd, ac mae e mor bengaled a styfnig. Er gwaetha'r problemau, mae Mam yn meddwl eu bod nhw'n ffodus iawn o'u cymharu â chymaint o bobl eraill.

Beth darodd fi yn y cartrefi preswyl oedd tynged lleiafrif o bobl nad oedd yn ymddangos bod â dementia. Roedden nhw'n hen ac yn eiddil, mae'n wir, ond fel arall heb unrhyw broblem iechyd meddwl hyd y gwelais i. Maen nhw'n gorfod rhannu eu bywydau gyda phobl sy'n sâl iawn - y rhai sy'n eistedd yn ddistaw, heb allu siarad nac ymateb i ddim, a'r rhai sy'n swnllyd ac yn ddryslyd.

Gwylltiodd rhywun wrth fwyta banana a dechrau llefain. "Gola-gola-gola-gola," meddai trwy'r amser.

"We've got a few escape artists here", meddai un o'r gofalwyr.

Mae'r staff yn gwneud eu gorau glas, ac maen nhw'n trefnu gweithgareddau ac adloniant i'r preswylwyr. Dyw hynny ddim yn digwydd ymhobman, ac dyw pethau ddim yn well yng Nghymru. Mae diffyg o weithgareddau ac adloniant yn un o'r beirniadaethau amlycaf yn adroddiadau CSSIW, y corff sy'n gyfrifol am arolygu cartrefi preswyl yng Nghymru.

Wrth reswm, mae trefnu gweithgareddau i grwpiau mawr o bobl mewn gwahanol gyfnodau'r clefyd yn hynod o anodd, ac un o negeseuon Beti George oedd pwysigrwydd cymdeithasu mewn grwpiau bach. Gan fod adnoddau'n mynd yn brinach, mae'n bwysicach oll cael rhagor o wirfoddolwyr sy'n fodlon treulio awr neu ddwy gyda'n hen ffrindiau.

Does dim angen lot, dim ond dal llaw rhywun, gwenu, dangos lluniau (blodau, anifeiliaid ac ati), neu ganu. Mae bron pawb yn gwerthfawrogi cerddoriaeth, hyd yn oed y rhai sy wedi cyrraedd cyfnodau hwyr y clefyd.

Wrth i bobl golli eu hannibyniaeth a'u byd yn mynd yn llai, mae iaith yn dod yn bwysicach iddyn nhw, yn enwedig i'r rhai sy'n siarad Cymraeg mewn cartrefi preswyl lle nad yw pawb yn gallu siarad yr iaith. Sylwodd Beti George fod pawb yn gwenu wrth glywed iaith eu plentyndod. Mae wyneb cyfeillgar, gwên a geiriau cyfarwydd yn golygu cymaint i'r bobl hyn.

Dyna anrheg nad yw'n costio dim.

Arrested development

Thanks to a link on Twitter, my attention was drawn the other day to an article on Click on Wales with the provocative headline "The arrested development of Welsh". You can read it for yourselves here.

The author of the piece, Colin Miles, has tried and given up trying to learn Welsh as an adult, although he lives in a strongly Welsh-speaking part of Wales. Fair enough, although I hope he reconsiders.

He wishes the language well, but the article goes on to peddle several myths which are common and which need to be challenged.


1. Welsh is inherently difficult with its "mutations, myriads of yeses and noes, innumerable ways of forming plurals, and overabundance of apostrophes".

All languages have their peculiarities, English included. Quite a few European languages have several (not innumerable) ways of forming plurals. German, Italian and Swedish, for example. In English you say children rather than childs. Languages are like that. Over time bits of language cling like barnacles to the hull of a ship while others are washed away, seemingly at random. Speakers of German, Italian, Welsh and Swedish don't even notice, and neither will learners of those languages after a while. That's just how it is.

And if you get it wrong, it doesn't matter. How many times have you heard young children saying mouses or mans? It happens, and we all understand what they mean, although we might gently correct the mistake.

The truth is that nearly all of the lovely twiddly bits which learners struggle with are not actually necessary to communication. If I say we was or even we beed it may not sound great, but you know exactly what I mean.

There is a group of languages called creoles and pidgins which do this as a matter of course. They strip all of the accumulated twiddly bits off languages like English and French, graft on vocabulary and bits of structure from other languages and set off on their own voyages as new languages. Over time they too will pick up barnacles. Afrikaans is an example of this.

The many different ways of saying yes and no are a peculiarity of the Celtic languages. But you can cheat, and just as you will come to find it natural to say dyddiau and blynyddoedd, in time you will find that you will stop saying ydw when you mean ydy. And you will not be arrested by the uniformed branch of Cylch yr Iaith if you get it wrong.


As for the mutations, a well kept secret (kept by Welsh teachers) is that Welsh speakers don't mutate correctly all the time or even most of the time. By which I mean that people don't mutate everything as laid out in the grammar books. If Welsh speakers had to put £1 in the mutation box every time they broke the rules, Welsh really would be heading for extinction. Within a month probably.

But while people break the rules, they mutate nevertheless. Ask the average Welsh speaker (including quite a few teachers I know) why most people say ges i sioc rather than ces i sioc, and it is very unlikely that they will know. They just do. So go with the flow and copy them.

We will come back to copying.

As for apostrophes, you don't need them to speak Welsh. Lots of Welsh speakers struggle with ar, a'r and â'r when they are writing, just as English greengrocers struggle with apple's. Don't worry about it. It's a bit like the Highway Code. We are supposed to know it inside out before we get behind the wheel of a car, but how many of us do?

A German professor and a German dustman both speak the same language, although the professor is likely to be rather niftier in his use of the subjunctive. But you will not come across a German dustman who says, "Sod all these subjunctives and genitives for a game of soldiers; I'm switching to English or Spanish because they are easier". And our hypothetical dustman should be warned that Spanish, often claimed to be the easiest European language to learn, has a hyperactive subjunctive (and quite a lot of irregular verbs to boot).

In everyday Welsh there are just 5 irregular verbs. English has more than 200, by the way. The subjunctive lingers on in both languages as twiddly bits, but if you don't know what the subjunctive is, I shouldn't worry about it if I were you. What a smart arse.

So are some languages "easier" than others? Well, up to a point. Polish has loads of twiddly bits, but for most of the languages spoken in Europe, including Welsh, it's a case of swings and roundabouts.

Staying with our professors and dustmen for a moment, it is probably fair to say that the professors will score higher in IQ tests (although listening to some academics, I am not so sure). But Polish dustmen have no problem with Polish, and in this part of Wales we have bilingual dustmen. So unless we have some particularly brainy dustmen, being able to speak more than one language is not about being super-intelligent, and there are lots of English university dons who have never mastered another language.

Next time you hear someone say that Welsh is a "difficult" language, try not to punch them. But I will forgive you if you do.

2. "Reading a 1950s history of a Welsh chapel is a bit like trying to read Chaucerian English".

Resisting the temptation to shout "Bollocks!", let's just say that Welsh differs from English in that it has a high degree of differentiation between registers. In plain English that means that there are degrees of formality in Welsh which are more marked than they are in English, from the sort of language used in poetry at one end, to the sort of language used in the pub at the other.

This happens in other languages too. In Switzerland the sort of German that people speak is very different to the sort of German they read in a newspaper. The same is true in Luxembourg. In Greece there are two distinct forms of the modern language (a posh, sophisticated one and the kind that people actually speak), but that all got a bit political, and the dictatorship of the Colonels pretty much did for Katharevousa.

It is true that nobody actually speaks the very formal variety of Welsh when they nip into Tescos, but it is nevertheless alive and well, especially in poetry and some prose writing. And its use is not confined to a handful of craggy old bards. There is a very lively poetry scene with lots of very talented young poets who use literary forms and all the intricate rules governing poetic form, metre and cynghanedd. Here's one about a bidet (Rhybudd: iaith gref).It contains some rather colourful language, and if you listen carefully, you will even hear the poet mutate his bidet.

As for that bit about Welsh not liking borrowed words, the Welsh for bidet is, um, bidet. Our poet also uses the word anws, the Welsh spelling of a Latin word borrowed by English as well.

See what you're missing?

All living languages have changed since the 1950s, and all living languages continue to change. It's what they do. But Welsh from the 1950s is not anywhere near as remote from the language today as Chaucer's English is from modern Estuarine English. If you want to see how much English has changed in the last 60 years, just watch an old film like Brief Encounter.

3. "Let me mention a couple of the strengths of English, both of which cause problems for other languages like Welsh. Firstly it has an absolutely enormous vocabulary".

Colin's second strength is the borrowing words from other languages bit, but there is an argument that English has probably borrowed more than is good for it. Vast numbers of Latinate words have entered the language, and in many cases they have killed off or stifled the development of native English words. The result is that the language has a high number of words for everyday things and concepts which, to the casual English speaker without a degree in the Classics, are little more than random arrangements of letters and sounds.

It is quite possible that this obsession with Latinate borrowings has had the effect of reducing the size of the active vocabularies of many native English speakers. A quick glance at the Sun will confirm that.

Let's take an example of an everyday word. The English word important comes from the Latin importare, meaning "to bring in". By extension, this came to mean "signify" (the import of her message was, etc.). All a bit obscure.

The Welsh word is pwysig, and coincidentally the German word is wichtig, both of which could be roughly translated as "weighty". The idea is that important things carry more weight than unimportant things.

All of which is a useful illustration of how different languages "see" some things differently. In this example, the English are peering through thick fog.


It is true that the Oxford English Dictionary is vast, and that Anglophiles love to claim that English has more words than any other language.

The truth is, of course, that a large proportion of the words in the OED is obscure or obsolete. That is what made the old panel game Call My Bluff possible. It would also be possible to play a Welsh equivalent using Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru, incidentally.

Studies have been carried out to try to estimate the numbers of words in regular use in different languages and to measure the vocabulary of an average speaker (if there is such a thing) of German, English, French, Welsh, etc.

The boring truth is that there is not a great deal of difference from one language to another in Europe, where cultures, climates, etc. are broadly similar .

Certainly English has its strengths in some areas of vocabulary, but there are quite a few instances where Welsh has several words at its disposal, and English has just one. And glaw (rain) is not one of them. Welsh has some neat words, such as oeri (to turn colder), where English has to use several. Swedish also has some very useful everyday words, such as orka (to have the strength to do something) and hinna (to have time to do something).

The Welsh word for 'night' is nos. You can turn that into a verb, nosi. English really struggles with this simple concept. If you say night has fallen or it is becoming night, you risk sounding like Dylan Thomas on a bad day.

Different languages obsess about different things, and the result is that many are capable of differentiating shades of meaning which English, for example, would really struggle with. Swedish insists on having two different words for "his", so that we know whether "he saw his mother" means that he saw his own or somebody else's mother. This lack of clarity in English is a godsend to writers of sitcoms, but being able to tell the difference is probably what makes Wallander such a good detective.

"He shot his dog, Inspector". An English-speaking cop could easily leap to the wrong conclusion, but Wallander wouldn't.

Perhaps that's why the English version with Kenneth Branagh just doesn't quite hack it.

So English is certainly a powerful and interesting language, but it is not superior to any other.

4. "One of the problems the Welsh language has faced over the past 150 years could best be described as ‘arrested development’. By that I mean it hasn’t had the chance to ‘modernise’ itself."

A problem common to many minority languages which lacked official status for so long is what is known in the jargon as "domain loss". Volumes have been written about this, but one example will suffice.

The country now known as Slovenia was under Austrian rule for hundreds of years, and German was the language of officialdom and the courts. Now Slovenia (population 2 million) is independent, and the civil service, the courts and all other areas of public life get by in Slovenian with no problem at all.

Next!

5. "Some people are just good at languages". "Children have a natural advantage when it comes to learning a language".

Not quite myths, but not completely true either.


Remember our bilingual dustmen? As it happens I know a couple of our local boys quite well. Neither of them would claim for a moment that they are intellectually gifted or good at languages. But they can hold their own in English and Welsh without any difficulty.

It is true that some people have a gift, but that is actually quite rare. Just as it is quite rare to find people who can play music by ear on lots of different instruments.

It is also true that people who have learned a second language find it easier to learn a third, fourth, and so on.

For most of us, however, learning a language means applying yourself and a bit of hard graft. You can expect to have quite a bit of fun along the way as well.

Language development in children is another subject that is beyond the scope of a blogpost, but it is true that children have some advantages in language acquisition. But only some.

How long does it take a child to acquire a good command of its native language? How long is a piece of string? A child of six can communicate effectively certainly, but children of six still have a long way to go before they have acquired all of the vocabulary and mastered the trickier bits of the language that they will need to function as adults.

The time taken will vary from child to child, and lots of external factors come into play. But for most of us language acquisition is still going on when we are in our mid to late teens. For an adult starting Welsh from scratch, you will certainly not need 15 years before you can communicate effectively.

Unlike babies and toddlers, adult learners can usually also read and write. That is certainly an advantage.

Unlike children, adult learners already have a handle on abstract concepts. You might teach a two year old to parrot words like intelligent, idea, decision, circumstantial but they would not normally have the faintest clue what these things meant.

So for once nature goes some way to creating a more level playing field. The kids have not got all the trump cards.

If you're reading this, Colin, I hope you might by now be wondering about giving it another try. If you do, here are a few tips.


So how do I learn Welsh (or any new language)?

• Motivation. What is your motivation for wanting to learn? Would you like to understand what Rhys Iorwerth was saying about his bidet perhaps? Or do you just want to be able to pass the time of day with Mrs Jones, Rhif 1? If you cannot think of a reason for wanting to learn, give up now. If you can (and there are lots and lots of reasons), set yourself a goal. "I will have a short conversation in Welsh with Mrs Jones, mentioning the weather and asking about that no-good son of hers by Christmas". For example.
• Be nosey. This is about motivation really, but eavesdrop on conversations in the shop/pub/cattle market if you live in an area with lots of Welsh speakers. You will fairly quickly begin to understand bits, and over time you will understand more and more. You want to understand what people are saying, and you want to know why they said it like that. Be subtle about this, and don't get yourself arrested for stalking or punched by Mrs Jones in Aldi.
• Copy people you hear in the shops, on the radio or on S4C. But as with the previous point, be discreet. If you have picked up a phrase, repeat it to yourself over and over again, trying to mimic the accent and pronunciation.
• In the privacy of your downstairs loo or your car practice some of the trickier sounds. Try rolling your r's, and try rolling them for longer and longer. Eventually you will beat your reluctant English tongue into submission, and it will trill on command. Do the same with tricky sounds like chi, llall, rhos, ar yr un pryd.
• If you are not lucky enough to live in a Welsh-speaking household, immersion therapy is still possible. Switch on Radio Cymru, and have Daf Du and Caryl Parry Jones twittering away in the background. Soon you will be able to pick out odd words. Eventually you will recognise bits of sentences. Gradually their stimulating chat will come into full technicolor focus. At which point you are allowed to turn the radio off.
• Drive your partner and/or family wild by switching over to S4C at every opportunity. Take up ironing, and watch Pobol y Cwm. Watch Dai Jones Llanilar with the English subtitles, but when you feel confident use only the Welsh subtitles. Look, no stabilisers!
• Some of the best conversations we have are with ourselves. Much more interesting, as often as not. Try this in Welsh. Keep asking yourself how you would say the sort of thing you might want to say in a conversation. Work out how to say it, and then have that imaginary conversation. "Fancy a cup of Horlicks and a cuddle, Mrs Jones? It's freezing out tonight". That sort of thing.
• You will make mistakes. Years ago Cneifiwr was staying with a respectable Swedish family. One day he wanted to help tidy up, so he asked Mrs Johansson, "Where do you keep the lady sucker?" The word he had been groping for was dammsugare (dust sucker = vacuum cleaner). Unfortunately he missed out one of the m's. These things happen. Mrs Cneifiwr told Old Mother Cneifiwr that her son was a dickhead. Mrs C is German, and Dickkopf is what someone has if they are stubborn (a fat head). Mother Cneifiwr was perhaps a little too understanding, and needless to say many people think Mrs C was right the first time round.
• Remember that most Welsh speakers are actually quite nice, and no matter how badly you mangle the language, they will almost certainly understand. You may be unlucky and find the odd Dickkopf. If you have just started learning, there is nothing wrong with starting out in Welsh and exchanging pleasantries before switching to English. Perhaps once you have passed the Horlicks and cuddle stage you may feel tempted to go all the way. And why not?

And there's lots more where that came from. Another time, perhaps.

So Colin, stop making excuses ("it's too hard; there are too many ways of saying yes; I don't like the nasal mutation, etc.). If you don't learn, it's only your development that will be arrested.