"The arms that you wield now are not such as your forefathers wielded; but they are infinitely more effective, and infinitely more irresistable" ~ Cymru Fydd leaflet, 1890

Friday 28 December 2012

Anyone for cola?

It's 'party' time again. So I've produced this handy guide to choosing your 'soft drinks'. We'll start with the most popular, Labour Coca-cola.

Sunday 23 December 2012

How do you solve a problem like Merthyr?

Regular readers will have seen the 'official' Welsh not British league table that I compiled from the census data. This showed the 22 counties in order of how much they rejected the notion of Britishness and embraced their Welshness.

Tuesday 18 December 2012

Carwyn and the airport

Not many people know this but when Carwyn Jones was a bachgen his mam used to cwtch him up in his byes and read him daring tales from his favourite book.

Saturday 15 December 2012

Colonialism 2.0

Colonialism now extends beyond the real world into the virtual world
You may have heard of the campaign for Wales to have it's own top level domains. An obvious example is a .com or .org. Unlike Jersey (.je), Guernsey (.gg) or the Isle of Man (.im) Wales does not have a TLD of it's own. This campaign has been handed to Nominet by the Welsh Government. That's very sporting of Nominet you might think, but just who are this Nominet.

Tuesday 11 December 2012

The majority of Wales is Welsh not British

The 2011 census results are out today and I will focus on the one solitary positive statistic that I gleaned from looking at the data. The majority of Wales is Welsh not British. After 800 years of colonial rule, after everything they have thrown at us we can still reject the notion that we are British or even the possibility that we are Welsh and British.

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Sunday 9 December 2012

Banning the Union Flag

A new e-petition has been launched by the founder of Plaid Glyndŵr, calling for the outright ban on flying the flag of the British Empire on all Welsh Government buildings in Wales. I'm not affiliated with Plaid Glyndŵr or any party for that matter. But I am all too happy to support a cause such as this.

Tuesday 4 December 2012

The hypocrisy of Ann Clwyd

Ann Clwyd hits the headlines today as she blames the Tories for killing her husband. Alright, maybe I have used some artistic license there but she did say that he died "like a battery hen". And after contracting hospital induced pnuemonia she also cites the poor condition he was left in.

Thursday 29 November 2012

#WelshTaliban

Thanks to @Lloyd1977 for sharing
So by now you've all probably seen the latest anti-Welsh language news story to come out of the Daily Mail. I skimmed it, it was laughable in places. The sort of 'moribund monkey journalism' that it's readership enjoys. But this post isn't focusing on the negative story, instead let's focus on the positive reactions that came about thanks to this story.

Monday 26 November 2012

Honouring Eileen Beasley

On saturday 26th November I was invited along to the Llangennech community centre, for those that don't know Llangennech, it's a small village four miles away from Llanelli, if you've ever been to Llanelli via the M4 then you will have passed by without even realising it. I know the community centre quite well as it's where I had my first Welsh classes when I started learning in 2011. Something I might never have been able to do without people such as Eileen.

Friday 23 November 2012

Tomos Watkin and the identity crisis

Tomos Watkin is a small brewery with a large identity crisis. Since 2002 it has been owned by The Hurns Brewing Company. If you look at their "mission statement" on their website then you will see the following.

Tuesday 13 November 2012

Government Expenditure and Revenue Wales

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Up in Scotland they have the GERS report. It stands for Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland. It is published on the Scottish Governments website and based on UK Public Sector Finance Statistics that are published in January.

Sunday 8 July 2012

How to e-petition the National Assembly for Wales

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Anyone, anywhere who has access to the internet can start an e-petition with the petitions committee for the National Assembly of Wales. The only criteria you need to meet is that the petition falls into one of the 20 devolved areas.

These are as follows.

Saturday 16 June 2012

There is nothing special or unique about our football clubs


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One myth I've heard and read many times is that if Wales was independent then our exiled football clubs; Swansea City, Cardiff City, Wrexham, Newport County, Colwyn Bay and Merthr Town would be ejected from English football and forced to play in the Welsh pyramid.

And considering how vital it is for Wales to win support from the valleys then it's crucial to have Swansea and Cardiff fans in particular on side. And there's a few important things you need to understand about football, not just in Wales and England but throughout the world before you can see how ludicrous this myth really is.

Original pic

Sunday 27 May 2012

How to use twitter

Click to follow @WelshnotBritish

What is twitter?

Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, known as "tweets". It was created in March 2006.

Twitter Inc. is based in San Francisco, with additional servers and offices in New York City. The Twitter website is one of the top ten most visited on the Internet.

Twitter has been cited as an important factor in the Arab Spring and other political protests.
Source - Wikipedia.


Friday 27 April 2012

The numbers game

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On the mission statement for this site I state the following...

It's become quite apparent to myself that this United Kingdom is anything but united. There is a focus on building up London and the South East to the detriment of every other "region" of the UK. It doesn't matter whether it is a Conservative or Labour government in charge, the end result of a weaker Wales is always reached by the time they are voted out.”

Sunday 25 March 2012

Congratulations Mr Cymru

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We've all heard the cliche, we're too small, too poor and too stupid to run our own country. Yes we're small but there are plenty of other, far smaller countries out there than have managed to make a success out of independence. Yes we are poor, and we have the UK governments constant desire to make the rest of the UK weak by destroying it's industry to thank for that. And yes we are stupid, otherwise we wouldn't keep falling for the same old lies again and again.

But what if there was another way? As Leanne Wood puts it, we're in a chicken and egg situation with the Welsh economy. “Wales won’t achieve independence whilst it is economically weak, but Wales will only achieve economic strength if it becomes independent. Ticking over is not enough for Wales”...

Friday 9 March 2012

Hindsight is 2020

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You may have heard of the EU 2020 targets. But for those that haven't they are the five ambitious objectives the 27 EU member states have set themselves.

In this article I want to look at one of those objectives, specifically the one that deals with climate change and energy. Something that is is a fairly contentious subject in Wales. Just mention wind farms to anyone and see how they react.

Climate change / energy
  • Greenhouse gas emissions 20% (or even 30%, if the conditions are right) lower than 1990
  • 20% of energy from renewables
  • 20% increase in energy efficiency

Friday 2 March 2012

Is there such a thing as Welsh media?

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It's 2012, 90% of people own a mobile phone. Unless you own one of those jumbo button phones you can only get in the back of the Daily Mirror for your Mamgu then they should all have internet access.

Smart phone ownership is up to 50% and accounts for 70% of all sales so this figure is only going to go up. Free or inclusive data are standard on most tariffs, even the cheapest ones that are around a tenner a month.

So why then, with the entire world at our very finger tips do we insist on spending more money on media propaganda disguised as Welsh media?

Friday 24 February 2012

Who owns Welsh water?

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Initially it might sound like a fairly bizarre question. Surely Welsh water belongs to Wales?

And once again the subject is being brought up in the media. Which isn't a surprise considering certain areas of the UK are almost in a continual state of drought. I'll come back to that later.

Let's look back to the 70s first, in particular to the Water Act 1973. This act restructured the water authorities in England and Wales ready for privatisation in the 80s. There is a full list of these here, but as always we only care about the ones that involve Wales. I will add that I will leave out Dee Valley Water and concentrate on the big two. I have also asked both Severn Trent and Dŵr Cymru for a complete list of their reservoirs in Wales to enable a more in depth analysis. Until then let's just focus on what can be found with a quick google.

Monday 13 February 2012

The Crown Estate

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In a previous article I briefly mentioned The Crown Estate. Or rather, how MP Jonathon Edwards raised a bill in Parliament to have energy generation (and The Crown Estate) devolved to Wales. 25 of the 26 Labour MPs and 8 out of the 8 Conservative MPs that represent Wales voted no (or stayed in bed, either way they betrayed us all).

Clearly proving that Labour and the Conservatives are against devolution. No matter what their minions in the Assembly say.

Monday 6 February 2012

What now for Labour voters?

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Welsh poltics used to be so simple. The average person in Wales just turned up at their polling station on election day, put a cross in the box next to Labour and went home safe in the knowledge they have played their part in the democratic act of "not letting those bloody Tories in".

Even after devolution and the formation of the Welsh Assembly the only thing that really changed for the average voter in Wales is that they were now able to vote for Labour twice as often.

Friday 3 February 2012

Wales' representation in the EU.

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The European Parliament has 754 MEPs. These represent the 27 member states of the EU. Wales is not a member as it is a region of the UK. The UK has 72 MEPs. Of this 72 only 4 represent the 3 million people that live in Wales. That's 0.5% of the total number of EU MEPs.