Why is Wales so poor? (Economy, language and more)

So you'd say that the English, Welsh and Scots are broadly speaking the same race?

 

Yes, though it depends on what you mean by 'race'. If we're talking in strictly scientific terms its a meaningless concept, but people often use it when they mean ethnicity, nationality, culture etc etc.

 

(eyes papers suspiciously)

just checking, just checking... move along now.

 

I just would have thought being massively subsidised might be considered odds in favour of the language's survival.

Without them it would probably be dead everywhere but in the halls of a couple of Universities.

 

Guess it should be fine without all that money now, then.

Could build a hospital or something.

 

The racial purity comment was partly a joke and partly serious. Nationalism doesn't really exist without notions of exclusivity.

I have a chip on my shoulder about certain kinds of nationalism. I like to poke and worry at the contradiction of otherwise intelligent and critical people getting crude, simplistic and uncritical under the nationalist banner.

I don't have any positive word to say about the Welsh because I think such a broad sweeping statement about a variety of different humans would be nonsense The only unifying trait that the Welsh have is being born in a particular part of this island - beyond that the identity is largely constructed. That in itself is all fine and dandy (providing the more ciritcal and intelligent people acknowlege it). The bit that pisses me off is when a large part of that construction seems to be about having a go at people who live in this part of the island for their constructed and artificial identity. How 'we' oppressed 'them' or 'we' took 'their' money and made 'them' poor. It's poppycock.

 

I don't know but i read an article recently that stated the Welsh model of promoting their threatened language has been seen as best practice and that other regions / languages such as Catalan are looking to follow suit.

Primarily this means investing in a Language TV channel etc.

 

It doesn't?

My mother is English. I'm welsh born and bred.

I think Wales is better off with Welsh rule not because my bloodline is any better but because i've seen how English rule has fattened English pockets over Welsh ones. Politics is all about self interest and Welsh interests are rarely in the self interest of the Londoncentric government.

 

Then they can spend their own money on it.

I have no quarrel with this. Would seem more appropriate for our European cousins to be funding a language we could actually speak to them in, though.

That's people's own money. The portion that the Government has seen fit that people can spend as they wish. You do see the difference, don't you?

 

Should not the party who were guilty of deliberately trying to kill the language bare the responsability for undoing the damage that they did?

Its not that the language faded cause people got bored of it. Children were beaten in schools for speaking welsh and made to wear the welsh knot etc. All thanks to the English government.

I personally don't feel that any of the funding should come from Welsh tax payers but that all of it should come from English taxpayers.

 

The Welsh language has nothing to do with the culture of most Welsh people.

 

Ending? What ending?

 

You only say that cause you don't live here.

I'm not a welsh speaker but even to me the welsh language forms part of my identy through wenglish, place names, cetain welsh songs and randon words and phrases such as:

Cymru am byth
Croeso y Cymru (on the borders)
Nos da
Cwtch

 

Yes, all people living in England are evil oppressors.

 

Nope but you elected them so share the blame.

 

fuck off! i elected no-one.

this idea of collective guilt just because of where you live is screwed. nationalists can get to fuck!

 

They're both taxpayers' money. A lot of it not even British taxpayers.

The fact that the Welsh language is growing in Wales proves nothing more than that a lot of money has been spent. It says nothing about the merits or otherwise about spending the money in this way.

 

Perhaps.

But they're dead.

So it goes.

 

he said something even more stupid than that. like i should take any responsibility for a government I haven't voted for.

 

And yet I bet you are happy enough to share in the collective profits (a rich economy) resulting from your country's past. Just not its sins.

 

You're mental if you think *all* English people somehow profited from 'exploitation' of Wales. It's like when we're being told to feel collective guilt for something like slavery, or something, even tho it was ages before we were born AND the average British person didn't exactly get rich off of it.

Highly deluded. That's what nationalists are.

Would it be okay, then for Welsh people to profit from stitching up their fellow countryfolk?

 

Most of whom know precisely five words of their national anthem. And can't even spell that many.