Welsh History - A Chronological Outline

I recently got my hands on a review copy of Welsh History - A Chronological Outline by Glyn E German from the nice people at Y Lolfa on the premise that I'd read it, review it and then give it away in a competition. What I've instead decided to do is read it, review it, run a competition and then buy a brand new copy and send that one to the winner. Firstly it's very good so I want to keep it and secondly I'd rather give away a new one than the one I've been thumbing through for the last month.

The idea behind the book is that it's a concise compilation of Welsh history, drawn from various sources starting with the oldest recorded signs of intelligent life in Wales and the rest of this island and then moving forwards until present day. The book is split into chapters covering the different periods of Welsh history.

The front cover

Wrexham Lager - A confused history

A simple image search for Wrexham Lager adverts, cans and beer mats will show a confused history of the Wrexham Lager company. They can all be summed up with the following poster, shared to my facebook page by a reader.

Wrexham, England. Share via twitter | facebook

Wales' problem with immigration

BBC Wales has devoted a large chunk of its resources today telling us about the rise in migration of the 'foreign born'. By 'foreign born' they are of course referring to those who were born outside the UK. They cannot simply fathom that people who were not born in Wales could be considered 'foreign born'.

The headlines read that the number of 'foreign born' rose by 82% in the 10 years between 2001 and 2011. Apparently they needed some think tank in Oxford University that is called the "Migration Observatory" to work this all out.

The article continues to mention how the Polish are the largest group of the 'foreign born'. It also tells us how many of these 'foreign born' Polish there are in Wales. You may wish to sit down for this, according to the 2011 census there were 18,023 'foreign born' Polish in Wales. I know that some of my come in error readers might find this number hard to grasp so I have graphed it in comparison with the second largest ethnic grouping in Wales.

Wales' immigration problem exposed. Share via twitter | facebook

Post Cymru

Shortly after the UK Government announced the privatisation of the Royal Mail the Scottish Government promised that after a yes vote they will renationalise the postal service in Scotland. The silence in Wales was broken this week with Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood asking for the postal service in Wales to be handed over to the Welsh Government in much the same way as the postal service was handed over to the Manx and the Channel Islanders. The fact that this is even happening should go to show people how much we in Wales are at the mercy of the Government that the people of England choose.

Imagine the spin off TV show on S4C? Share via twitter | facebook

A private party

There are 365 days this year. St Davids Day occurs once a year, as a fraction that is 1/365ths. As a decimal that is 0.0027 and as a percentage it is 0.27% of the year. I think you get the point that it's a relatively short space of time in comparison to the whole year.

Save the Valleys, save the country!

Haawkwaard credit rating.

The Better Together campaign were left a little red faced recently when the UK lost it's AAA credit rating as it had printed and distributed thousands of leaflets making the following claim.

"Scots save billions on the cost of mortgages due to the UK's AAA credit rating".

Scumbag Labour - Post Offices

Back in 2008 the Labour UK Government voted in favour of closing 2500 post offices. The opposition had wanted the closure to be suspended, pending further review but Labour voted no to the suspension. Now that Labour are the opposition party they are keen to keep local post offices open. One of these post offices they are trying to keep open is in Peter Hains constituency of Neath.

Tweet picture

Plaids new constitution

Plaid Cymru is having a meet up to discuss a new constitution. Although if you read the BBC article it sounds more like crisis talks.

IWJ after making Plaid less loved in Wales than the Tories

Seigniorage

At first glance it may sound like a really mad Spaniard. But seigniorage is the difference between the cost of making money and the value of the money. And it's something that came to mind when I heard Plaid Cymru proposing the introduction of a Welsh Bank.

Mock up from Welsh Icons April 1st 2012 post

Pro-Wales v Anti-Wales

I created this flow chart which I believe fully explains why Wales needs to be free from colonial rule. It also demonstrates how you cannot be both Pro-Wales and Pro-UK. For the latter to work then you need the full control of the extraction of resources from the colonies. Since Wales is a colony that means if you are pro-UK then you support the colonisation of Wales which makes you anti-Wales.

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The Battle of Llwchwr

January 1st marks the anniversary of the battle of Llwchwr. Where the Welsh stood up against the would be colonists and defeated them. As we know Wales eventually lost the war and we has been a colony of our neighbour to the east ever since.

Star marking the commemoration stone - Google map link

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.

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.

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.

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.

#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.

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.

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.

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.